Waco Brothers

ARTICLES ABOUT WACO BROTHERS BY DATE - PAGE 5

Just about everyone, at one point or another, has wanted to be a rock musician; it's fun to daydream about riding around in limos, playing sold-out shows and having unlimited artistic freedom. But the day-to-day life of the average working musician isn't exactly a non-stop party, and scrambling to pay the bills often doesn't leave much time for creating art. Sure, lots of people work hard for low pay, but in the arts, there has been a long history of well-to-do patrons supporting artists with infusions of cash.

So you're a fan of Wilco, the Waco Brothers and Red Red Meat, but since you became a parent you just don't get out to see bands like you used to. Well, here's your chance to make everyone happy AND get home in time to see the Super Bowl. It's the Wiggleworms Dads in Concert shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music Sunday afternoon starring the lead singers of each of the above bands. For those who don't know, Wiggleworms is an Old Town School class that introduces tots -- 6 months to 3 years old -- to music through games and sing-a-longs.

Lesli Susan Manning Doughty was born with a hole in her heart, in the right ventricle to be exact. She was told she probably wouldn't last long into adulthood. But she proved everybody wrong. After all, Mrs. Doughty, an aspiring actress, artist and well-known bartender around Chicago, was known for defying the odds. She wasn't the type of person who would let three open heart surgeries dictate the way she was going to live her life. But after three weeks in a coma, Mrs. Doughty died Saturday in St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital.

Like Louis Armstrong in the '50s and '60s, percussionist and composer TITO PUENTE has become the widely beloved, globetrotting goodwill ambassador of his musical genre long after he made his most significant recordings. In the '40s, Puente emerged as one of the most important popularizers of Latin music in this country when he began fusing the power and swing of big band jazz with the instrumental color of Latin dance ensembles and the infectious pull of Caribbean rhythms -- especially the mambo.

Charging in the new Waco Brothers raise the roof to welcome in 1999 at Lounge Ax Like some benign Beowulf lurching and yowling a welcome to the new year, the Waco Brothers wreaked havoc on the roadhouse New Year's Eve and left a sloppy wreck of humanity happily exhausted in its wake. Few bands have more fun onstage than the Waco Brothers, and it's infectious. Succumbing to the energy of their punk genre-melange is a fair substitute for 7 a.m. TV aerobics, and Thursday's crowd at Lounge Ax may have awakened to whiplash from bobbing their party-hatted heads in time with such revelry.

"When you get a bit older you start thinking about where you come from," observes Chicago rocker Jon Langford, a native of Wales. "You suddenly wake up one morning and realize you're thousands and thousands of miles away." That awareness, and the reflections that come with it, form the basis of Langford's new record, "Skull Orchard," just released on the small local Sugar Free label. Langford and his band will perform for an Internet broadcast from the Tribune Tower at 8:30 p.m. Monday.

Even in Chicago's incestuous underground scene, where working musicians can be seen playing, drinking and then passing out with a different band virtually every other weekend, Jon Langford sets a fast pace. Since moving here from England several years ago, he's worked up a soundtrack for local theater; kept up a steady stream of releases and concerts as a member of the Waco Brothers, the Mekons and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts; co-written songs and performed with fellow Mekon Sally Timms; and cranked out a steady stream of artwork and a weekly comic strip.

Neko Case at Lounge Ax: The word on Neko Case couldn't be better. Although the 27-year-old singer now lives in Vancouver, her musical proclivities lean toward Chicago's earnest, punky, alt-country sound. And lest you think she lacks country cred, her bio states she was born on the same day (Sept. 8) and in the same state state (Virginia) as Patsy Cline. Her Canadian-released album, "The Virginian," isn't even out in the United States (Bloodshot Records will release it in February) but it has already been predicted by some as a likely best of '98. Unfortunately, against this big buildup, Case's performance Saturday night was a real disappointment.

Waco Brothers Do You Think About Me? (Bloodshot) (star) (star) (star) This collection of studio outtakes and two new cover versions is less cohesive than local heroes the Waco Brothers' first two CDs. The country-punk sextet plays them all with free-spirited urgency, though, deftly mixing boozy vocals, crunching guitars, bright mandolin and steel guitars and an unstoppable rhythm section. Backed by the Poi Dog horns, they tip their Stetsons to "Exile on Main Street" on the brass-fueled title track.

- A caption on the first music page of today's preprinted Friday section misidentifies the band in the photo. The band is the Waco Brothers. - In Stephen Chapman's column Thursday on the Constitution, the reference to the rights protected by the 1st Amendment omitted freedom of religion. - The width and height of the 1997 Mustang GT were transposed in the facts box accompanying the "muscle-car" story in Thursday's Cars section. The car's width is 71.5 inches and height is 53.2 inches.